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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

As an insomniac I naturally despise setting the clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time. I mean, suddenly I'm a whole hour lazier than I was before. Granted, the fact that this requires absolutely no effort on my part IS pretty sweet, but still.

Anyway, it occurred to me that we should use this annoying occasion to not only remind everyone to change out the batteries in their smoke detectors, but also to change out any cake displays they may have lying about. You know, in case you have something like this in your living room window:

Those decorations make this an appropriate cake for itself, but thinking about that makes my brain kinda hurt.

Or this:

Looks like something you'd find in the abandoned town of Pripyat, doesn't it? All it needs is a little singed teddy bear lying next to it. So sad.

This Wreck is also the lucky recipient of Jen's Unsolicited Rant of the Day:

"Attention bakery persons: this is a display cake, meant to advertise your product, is it not? Because I could almost forgive the two giant blobby flowers on a soccer cake, the fallen players, and the thick coating of dust, but you know where I draw the line? THE RIBBON. Seriously, you couldn't take an extra 5 seconds to put the ribbon overlap in the back? Really? Do you want me to write an entire sentence in italics? Well, do ya?!?"

Yeah... The bakery I work at has some of these. I take a small amount of comfort in that they are 10 feet up on the wall almost out of view. I will be saying something about them now. Granted, they aren't as bad as some of these (what is up with that soccer one??) but they could certainly use a face lift.

So, is that supposed to be shag carpet or fiberglass insulation on the first cake? Which one would fit the theme better? 70's harvest gold or scratchy "it looks like cotton candy, but soooo isn't!" insulation. Hmmm, neither can explain the footsteps. I guess we'll never know.

It's a tradition! Here is the passage from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens:

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air - like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

I was playing along nicely (sort of) until the 1999 cake and the sad scenario of a cake not picked up because the guy didn't graduate stuck in my mind. Now, I know it's supposed to be a demo cake, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.And why does the Old Crab look like a hippo?

WV reduper--the second copy of a display cake, made to look fresher.All these cakes need a reduper.

Okay, question here. If the food court has mastered faux pretzels that always make the guy in front of me argue about whether or not they are really out of pretzels and the only slightly more upscale restaurant waiter can show everyone all week what the 6 dessert option are includng the icecream sundae, why then can't the cake bakeries find a way to display their talents with 'icing' that will not mold?

wv - inarveri - the clerk to customer, 'as you can see by the example inarveri old er own display case, Edna had er has a very steady hand with the icing bag."

Hmmm, two only questions come to mind...A) Do these bakeries actually get business?andB) Do people actually look in the window "before" entering the bakery?Just wondering cuz' I was thinking this cake decorating gig might be easier than I thought, better than those "make millions quick" infomercials even. It's certainly something to consider...

Ahhhh...Miss Havisham's cake! I do remember the scurrying of spiders, and how goosefleshy I got picturing that. I don't remember ever seeing a cake made out of a dirty old shag rug. The soccer game seems to have been interrupted by aliens in the shape of huge blue cabbages, and these aliens had something to do with the fallen blue team players. Not at all sad; just messy.I really think the art deco-y squiggles on the brownish cake are kinda cool, but the effect was altered somewhat when someone carelessly "hawked a looie" on it. *tsk tsk*I actually think that the pale pink leaves on the bitter-dee-hay day cake are lovely--a nice change from the usual Play-Doh green crap most cake leaves are made of.Don't really have much to say about the last one, other than it seems to be displayed within the siderails of a hospital bed or gurney of some sort. Huh.

Nothing to say about the cakes because they're beyond gross but good on you for the Pripyat reference....I've always wanted to go on a photography expedition there but your link sort of cured the need for now. ;-)

Okay, I just have to ask. Do these bakeries exist in some sort of twilight zone where vermin does not exist? Because where I'm from, there would be a small army of extremely fat roaches sprawled around the room, and the ants would have built small interstates leading to and from the spot where the cakes are displayed. On the plus side, there would no longer BE any cake on display.

I graduated in 99, it's just sad that there are cakes still around from then. Why would any bakery display something from 10 years ago? And why would they think that anything made back then would be even remotely interesting to someone today?

I had to make a four tier dummy cake for a fondant class, but I didn't own the bakery, so my cake did not go on display. I carried it around in my back seat for a few days then finally pitched it at a carwash.

Being naive on the conditions of cakes that have sat around too long...I would have thought that the decoraters all used the same recipe to get that lovely dust brown shade of icing. Who knew! lol. sidenote: my great grandmothers lace doilies from 1906have turned the same color...

Not only is there quite a lot of mouse poop all over the top of the soccer cake, but there's a message there (and not just mouse "messages" ;-) )- if mice have been all over that cake and there's no sign of them having EATEN any of it, what does that say about the edibility of the cake? Would you want to eat a cake from a bakery whose cake even mice (not noted for their gourmet propensities) reject? :-P

Having JUST consumed a large slab of chocolate cake prior to viewing this post, I'm now not feeling very well...bleahhhh!

The second cake is heavingly disgusting...and yes, it appears there are some rodent dropping by the "H" in Happy. EEEWW!! That's a whole lotta nasty! I also noted the blue team appears to be losing...big time!

For the love of all that is Holy, couldn't they at least vaccuum the dust bunnies off? Use a duster, or perhaps a Swiffer to remove some of the debris? Gross. Just. Plain. Gross. DEBRIS should not be in a sentence relating to cake!

I guess that is meant to be grass on the aging hill, but all I can see are tiny villi of the small intestine, waiting to suck the nutrients out of their ceramic wall decorations, before they are swept off to the acending colon.

I was always under the impression that display cakes were actually styrofoam blocks iced with spackle and caulk... you know, so that they won't get all moldy and rotten? Seems like a lot of bakeries took issue with the idea of faking it.

I can't quite figure out who's winning the soccer game. The red team has more players who managed to stay upright, but the blue team has odd alien rose pods. Perhaps we should call it a draw and throw the cake out?

The soccer one--besides the ribbon (done wrong and shouldn't be there), besides the rat/mouse poop, besides the weird "flowers", besides the fallen players...what about the GREEN goalie?!? He should have never been there.

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